In the Face of Adversity
by Moosical
Summary: ONE SHOT - Post BD.  Esme P.O.V.  When a war changes the world beyond all recognition, Esme recounts how the Cullens deal with things.


To say that the world had changed over the years would be an understatement. We'd lived in a wide range of places, yet despite the change in scenery. Carlisle would work the local hospital, I would keep the home running or take on a job if I so desired and the others would either pose as students or work, depending on how they felt.

Renesmee and Jacob would split their time between staying with us and staying with the pack at La Push, but in recent years they stayed more often with the pack.

Technology advanced, the field of medicine changed and Carlisle was always having to refresh his skills. Financial markets would rise then fall, but our vast fortune was safe thanks to a mixture of prudent saving and Alice's gift helping us to avoid any major issues. Mother nature took it's course and there were a number of catastrophe's that saw devastation in various parts of the world, but people rallied together and donated where they could.

When Alice's visions started to come through she hoped, as did we all that she was somehow wrong, but we all knew that this was unlikely. It started as a threat of war between America and Russia, then other countries started to take sides. We watched on in horror as the fighting started. Various countries allied themselves to the two warring countries, as troops were dispatched. We made preparations of our own.

As the fighting increased we spent weeks hunting and after satiating our thirst with one animal we went on to drain the blood of others so that we could bag it up. We stockpiled as much as we could, Carlisle had refrigerator units installed in our basement and we had hunted in a wide range of places including closer to home than usual, but we knew that any suspicion that grew amongst our neighbours wouldn't matter soon.

Carlisle also smuggled home bags of blood from the hospital bloodbank. None of us were all too keen on the idea of drinking human blood after going so long without it, but we knew that it may reach a point where we had no other choice.

When the time came for what Alice had seen in her vision we gathered together in our current home, we had the TV on in the background, but we knew that the transmission would soon end. Alice however was able to keep us up to speed with what was happening. Warnings went out for people to stay in doors, though that would do no good, In a moment of relative madness several countries each released bombs, many of them nuclear.

The result was total devastation.

Cities were burned, whole countries disappeared, fires blazed and ravaged forests around the world and the humans and animals that did not perish in the initial blast were soon affected by the radiation. Against the odds the news transmission carried on for almost 3 days, but soon the presenters began to visibly deteriorate until the feed turned to white noise.

Alice kept us informed on the outside world, survivors were turning into savages, rather than pulling together they fought for survival and it was every man for themselves. Even families fighting to the death for food and shelter.

We were prudent with feeding from the blood we had stockpiled, we learnt to go for longer and longer stretches before feeding, some of us handled that better than others and occasionally we bickered, but if anything this current state of affairs was bringing us closer together.

We took some pleasure in Alice's visions of the Volturi, they hadn't done well at all. They had no forewarning of the bombs, although they survived the blasts and subsequent radiation, their food source disappeared almost instantly, they quickly learnt that the bodies of those who died of radiation poisoning did not make for a good meal, the blood tasted vile and made them feel weak. They made plans to leave Volterra and look for other food sources, but they grew weaker by the day and Alice could not see them lasting for very long. If not from the thirst, but from the in fighting.

For quite some time Alice's visions showed nothing but fire and burning, the visions took their toll on Alice and Edward, we got the information as they recounted it, but they were seeing it in so much more detail.

We didn't think anything could be worse than that until the visions of the temperature drop came. Alice could see the fires dying out only to be replaced by freezing cold temperatures, those that against all odds survived the fires, would soon be craving the heat the fires had provided as the ice was so much less forgiving. As time passed Alice's visions lessened, whilst the world was a shell of its former sense she saw nothing else happening for now.

We started to venture out, to explore what was left of the world, there were still animals to hunt. We found a few survivors and helped them where we could, but they were few and far between.

I look around at my family and feel proud that we succeeded where the humans could not, in the face of adversity we, the former monsters of our world retained our humanity.


End file.
